Skip to the word
Slova
Start learning
Menu

How to pronounce island

Island is pronounced EYE-lund, with two syllables and the stress on the first. The s is silent, so it sounds like eye plus land. American and British English say it the same way.

Say it yourself
  • 2 syllables
  • Stress on EYE
  • US and UK IPA
  • Checked in Cambridge and Oxford

island

Two syllables, stress on the first

noun · a piece of land with water all around it

  1. EYEaɪ (stressed)
  2. lundlənd
  • US /ˈaɪ.lənd/EYE-lund Recorded voice
  • UK /ˈaɪ.lənd/EYE-lund Your device’s voice

IPA checked in the Cambridge Dictionary and Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. The recording is American English.

Island, sound by sound

Each sound in the IPA, with a word you already know that has it.

USUK American and British English/ˈaɪ.lənd/

  1. EYEstressed

    • /aɪ/as in my

  2. lund

    • /l/as in leg
    • /ə/as in about
    • /n/as in now
    • /d/as in did

Say island yourself

Press the microphone and say it once. Your browser writes down what it hears: if it writes island, you were understood. If it writes another word, you see which sound changed.

Tip. The s is silent. Say EYE-lund, like eye + land.

Record yourself and play it next to our recording: the quickest way to hear a difference.

Say it

Say this word

island

    Common island pronunciation mistakes

    What people often say instead, and how to fix it. Say EYE-lund.

    • NotIS-lund

      Saying the s and a short i. The first part is the eye sound, as in my.

    • NotEYE-slund

      Saying the s. Go straight from the eye sound to l.

    • Notis-LAND

      Stressing the second syllable. The stress is on EYE.

    Island in a sentence

    Hear each one, slow it down, then say it. Words change a little when they join others, so practise them in sentences too.

    • They live on a small island near Greece.

    • The island has no cars at all.

    • We took a boat to the island.

    Why is the s in island silent?

    The s is in the spelling only. The word comes from Old English iegland, from ieg, island, plus land, so the word has always meant island-land. It had no s, and the earlier English spelling was iland.

    In the 1500s the spelling changed. Writers linked island to the word isle and to the Latin insula, which has an s, and they added it. But island and isle are not related. The sound never changed.

    So say it as two parts: the word eye, then land with a weak vowel: EYE-lund. Do not put an s between them, and keep the stress on EYE.

    Words that sound like island

    Rhymes and words that share its tricky sound. Open any of them in the checker and say it.

    More words with silent letters

    All 170 difficult words

    Say words like island out loud with Slova

    In Slova you say new words out loud in every lesson, at your level, in lessons built around what you love.

    Start learning free
    All free tools